Telephone communication is a nearly universal method of communication in our society. Telephones provide a fast and efficient means for contacting someone at any time of the day or night anywhere in the country or even the world. Where large number of people need to be contacted, for example in telemarketing applications, automated outbound dialing systems are used to expedite the contacting as many people as possible by telephone in a limited time period. There are three basic components to an automated outbound dialing system. First, there is a computer in which a database containing the data records is stored. Second, there is an automated dialer into which telephone numbers are downloaded from the host computer for automated dialing and thirdly there are human operators to talk to the people contacted. In the operation of such a system, a set of telephone numbers are identified in the computer and are downloaded into the automated dialer either at the beginning of the work day or as operators are available to talk. As soon as human operators are ready to talk, the automated dialer begins dialing and proceeds to take the appropriate action as the telephone calls are answered. The appropriate action usually consists of transferring the line to a human operator.
To date, the majority of the dialing apparatus which have been used to conduct telemarketing campaigns of this type are computers equipped with dialogic boards. The dialogic board is a dialing peripheral which can be connected within or to a computer which allows for the computer to dial or answer telephone calls using an operator telephone also connected to the PC and board. Furthermore an elaborate computer network system is required.
Increased globalization in the economy, as well as increasing amounts of corporate outsourcing of customer contact functions, have led to the proliferation of telephone call centres from which telephone contact campaigns and customer service functions are conducted. These types of call centres may have tens or even hundreds of human operators, and similar numbers of incoming subscriber telephone lines, all of which are interconnected by elaborate control, dialing and recordkeeping systems. In a call centre environment such as this, the prior art approach of using computers equipped with dialogic boards to handle the majority of the dialing functions and requiring a computer in front of every operator is not practical given the numbers of telephone contacts or calls being handled as well as the physical size of the call centre and the number of human operators or sheer magnitude of the amount of telephone equipment which is involved. Generally speaking in an environment such as this, large digital telephone systems with automated dialing control systems integrated therein are the norm. Equipment such as this is costly to install and requires significant investments of time and resources in maintenance as well.
Until recently these dialing control systems were basically unavailable to smaller users, since the installation and maintenance overhead on these types of systems is prohibitive for smaller to medium-sized businesses. Smaller call centres or telephone campaign operators need a more simple or straightforward dialing controller to administer telephone campaigns. One such example of a simple hardware dialing controller which can be used to administer a telephone contact campaign in a smaller environment is disclosed in U.S. patent Ser. No. 6,198,814. FIG. 1 shows one embodiment of this multiline dialing system which employs a specific hardware dialer, rather than one or more PCs with dialogic boards, attached to a server computer and a plurality of operator telephones, as well as a plurality of telco lines. The basic requirements for such a multiline dialer installation are a plurality of telephone company phone lines, which can be connected to the ‘outside’ half of the dialing apparatus, and then one or more internal operator stations are connected to the ‘inside’ half of the dialer circuitry. The remainder of the dialer hardware is then used to coordinate the dialing or answering of telephone calls on the outside telco lines and connecting those calls to operators staffing the operator stations internally connected to the dialer. One type of multiline dialing hardware which is often used in telemarketing applications is a predictive dialer. A predictive dialer is a telephone dialing system in which outbound calls are automatically placed in anticipation of telephone agents becoming available. The predictive dialer system will pace outbound telephone calls to maintain a specified target mean connection time as close as possible to those parameters specified by the system.
One major problem with the use of a multiline dialing controller such as that disclosed in the 814 patent is its commercial utility and success. The market adoption and commercial success of these types of hardware have been significant and as such many users of these types of controllers are now looking for cost-effective expansion alternatives for their businesses. In order to expand the call centre beyond, for example, the six operators which are shown in the embodiment of FIG. 1, it is necessary to install a second or additional multiline dialing controller, with the attendant number of additional outside subscriber telephone lines and operator telephone sets. Each multiline dialing controller in that invention is also connected to its own host computer which contains the dialing database for use in the administration of the telephone contact campaign in accordance with that invention. While this can certainly be done, the scalability of solutions such as this is limited. For example, the administrator of a very large telephone contact campaign would likely prefer not to administer their contact campaign using multiple multiline dialing controllers each with its own distributed copy of the dialing database, since the administration involved in maintaining accurately split copies of the dialing database or otherwise integrating the data from those multiple databases on the multiple host computers creates additional administrative overhead. Also, there may not be optimal use at all times of all of the outside subscriber telephone lines or all of the human operators on each multiline dialing controller.
It is felt that if a scalable multiline dialing controller which was expandable in sufficient size to enable its use in a medium to larger sized call centre which avoided the problem of replicated copies of the dialing database and/or allowed for the optimal use of all of the human operators and all of the outside subscriber telephone lines on the entire system, this would be an attractive hardware solution which could compete in terms of efficiency and performance with the larger dedicated digital systems now used in large sized call centres while being more economical, and providing expandability or an upgrade path for users of a more basic multiline dialing controller who might eventually find themselves requiring additional capacity on their system.